Night Sins Read Free

the area that served as a combination nurses' station and admissions desk.
    Hannah leaned over the counter. “Carol? Could you please call the hockey rink and leave word for Josh that I'll be a little bit late? Maybe he can practice his skating.”
    “Sure thing, Dr. Garrison.”
    Dr. Craig Lomax arrived on the scene in immaculate surgical greens, looking like a soap opera doctor.
    “Jesus,” Kathleen muttered half under her breath, “he's been watching
Medical Center
reruns again. Get a load of the Chad Everett hair.”
    Strands of black hair tumbled across his forehead in a careless look he had probably spent fifteen painstaking minutes in front of a mirror to achieve. Lomax was thirty-two, madly in love with himself, and afflicted with an overabundance of confidence in his own talents. He had come to Deer Lake Community in April, a reject from the better medical centers in the Twin Cities—a hard truth that had not managed to put so much as a dent in his ego. Deer Lake was just far enough outstate that they couldn't afford to be choosy. Most doctors preferred the salaries in the metro area over the chance to serve the needs of a small rural college town.
    Lomax had arranged his features in a suitably grave expression that cracked a little when he caught sight of Hannah. “I thought you'd gone home,” he said bluntly.
    “Kathleen just caught me.”
    “In the nick of time,” the nurse added.
    Lomax sucked in a breath to chastise her for her attitude.
    “Save it, Craig,” Hannah snapped, tossing her things on a waiting area couch and moving forward as the doors to the ER slid open.
    A stretcher was rolled in, one paramedic at the rear, one bent over the patient, talking to him in a soothing tone. “Hang in there, Mike. The docs'll have you patched up in no time.”
    The young man on the stretcher groaned and tried to sit up, but chest and head restraints held him down on the backboard. His face was taut and gray with pain above the cervical collar that immobilized his neck. Blood ran down across his temple from a gash on his forehead.
    “What have we got here, Arlis?” Hannah asked, shoving up the sleeves of her sweater.
    “Mike Chamberlain. Nineteen. He's a little shocky,” the paramedic said. “Pulse one twenty. BP ninety over sixty. Got a bump on the noggin and some broken bones.”
    “Is he lucid?”
    Lomax cut her off on the way to the stretcher with a move as smooth as glass. “I'll handle it, Dr. Garrison. You're off duty. Mavis.” He nodded to Mavis Sandstrom. The nurse exchanged a glance with Kathleen, her expression as blank as a cardshark's.
    Hannah bit her tongue and stepped back. There was no point in fighting with Lomax in front of staff and the patient. Administration frowned on that kind of thing. She didn't want to be there anyway. Let Lomax take the patient who would require the most time.
    “Treatment room three, guys,” Lomax ordered, and ushered them down the hall as a second ambulance pulled into the drive. “Let's start an IV with lactated ringers . . .”
    “Dr. Craig Ego strikes again,” Kathleen growled. “He has yet to grasp the notion that you're his boss now.”
    “No biggie,” Hannah said calmly. “If we ignore him long enough, maybe he'll stop trying to mark territory and we can all live happily ever after.”
    “Or maybe he'll flip out and we'll find him in the parking lot, peeing on car tires.”
    There wasn't time to laugh. A heavyset EMT from the second ambulance charged into the reception area.
    “We've got a full arrest! Ida Bergen. Sixty-nine. We were bringing her in with cuts and bruises, and as we pulled into the drive,
bam!
She grabs her chest and goes—”
    The rest of her words were lost as Hannah, Kathleen, and another nurse bolted into action. The emergency room erupted into a whirlwind of sound and action. Orders shouted and relayed. Pages sounding for additional staff. The stretcher wheeling into the reception area and down the hall. The trauma